Engaging Experiences in Interactive Museum Exhibitions

The aim of the present paper is to outline possibilities for the development of combined IT and architectural concepts supported by joint engaging experiences for visitors to the room of the museum of the future. Focus is upon a joint experience, as many existing IT-systems designed for museums primarily appeal to a strong individualised experience where the visitor views a PDA or similar, rather than experience the atmosphere and interaction of the room. In this context, there are several examples from practice and in the research literature of IT-systems for science centres, art museums and history museums.
There is considerable potential in the development of experiences and in the communication of information customized to visitors in the museum apart from personally held information devices.
The paper will present background research for developing solutions to a new media museum. This museum is a particular challenge as the exhibition objects, i.e. radios, TVs and tape recorders, present information media and have a great potential in being ‘live’. This way a major part of the experience in the museum will be the sensation created through the combination of object, environment and the atmosphere that can be created through multimedia.
Different cases in perspective of existing museums will be introduced, the values and critical points will be discussed, and the seeds for a new kind of museum experience will be presented.
This feeds a redefinition of the museum experience, and we will look upon the consequences for the social, cultural and informative experience.